foundation year engineering student

Hi everyone,
I am a foundation year student studying mechanical engineering at the university of salford.
I just joined this forum, i hope it is beneficial for me. I wanted to ask you guys that is there anything beneficial that I should study during my summer holidays, before the start of my first year.

Cheers mate! Thanks for the reply. I have enjoyed studying the foundation year, cant wait for the real engineering to start. And gareth i got to know about your forum through app store. Looks to me like a great forum oh btw Ive got an exam tomorrow hope it goes well

My advice, after almost 10 years of collage and having applied for multiple positions for both internships and jobs at all degree levels, is NOT to strive for a high GPA. Instead, focus that extra effort on joining extracurricular engineering projects and groups (like Formula SAE, etc.) and get as much experience doing real engineering as possible. Also, every summer you need to make getting an internship a top priority. Your first couple years will likely be more math, physics, and humanities than engineering, but there are still internships out there for first and second year students.

From my experience, companies gloss right over my 3.9 GPA and go straight to “Oh, you don’t haven any internships?” Considering how much time, pain, and self-denial it took to maintain that GPA, it sucks big time, believe me. Looking back, I would trade my GPA for more extracurricular experience and internships. Companies care much more about your experience than about having a great GPA. You should still strive for a respectable GPA, but I would suggest putting priority on real engineering experience. At my school at least (UC Davis), the coursework focus is very “academic” and not nearly as directly applicable to real-world engineering as a young engineering student might hope. Of course, your school may be different, in which case my advice is not quite as applicable, but I would still hold to it. Even if you have to come up with your own projects, do it. You should have invaluable resources at your school that you can pull on (CAD programs, computer labs, metal shops, library, etc.)

Thank you so much for your reply mh jones. I really appreciate your advice on getting some work experience. I was actually thinking that myself and have come up with a few ideas for my summer holidays. I will also try to look for internships, and make my the most of my time

I am a Automotive Engineer by trade and have beein in this industry for over 25 years, I have many qualifications in all surrounding areas to engineering that are affected or could be affected by it such as law, management, health and safety etc. I have worked my engineering experience and training up to completing a degree, where I have started to follow the pathway for the BENG(Hons) degree. At this present time I am working my way through the maths and science, physics etc, which I find quite enjoyable but am questioning some aspects of the examples given as they appear more academic rather than applied if you can see what I am trying to say

I hope you enjoy your studies at Salford, just down the road from me actually, where I am doing my studies part time by distance learning through the OU as I am working in full time employment.